Eric Voegelin.pdf - Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft

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ecumenical empires. The Persian Empire is followed by the
conquests of Alexander, the Diadochian empires, the
expansion of the Roman Empire, and the creation of the
Parthian and Sassanian empires. The collapse of the ancient
empires of the East, the loss of independence for Israel and
the Hellenic and Phoenician city-states, the population shifts,
the deportations and enslavements, and the interpenetration of
cultures reduce men who exercise no control over the
proceedings of history to an extreme state of forlorness in the
turmoil of the world, of intellectual disorientation, of material
and spiritual insecurity…. [Among the efforts to cope with
this crisis] are to be found: the Stoic interpretation […], the
Polybian vision of a pragmatic ecumene […] to be created by
Rome, the mystery religions, the Heliopolitan slave cults,
Hebrew apocalyptic, Christianity, and Manichaeanism. And
in this sequence, as one of the most grandiose of the new
formulations of the meaning of existence, belongs
gnosticism.“
„Of the profusion of gnostic experiences and symbolic
expressions, one feature may be singled out as the central
element in this varied and extensive creation of meaning: the
experience of the world as an alien place into which man has
strayed and from which he must find his way back home to
the other world of his origin...The world is no longer the wellordered
cosmos. Gnostic man no longer wishes to perceive in
admiration the intrinsic order of the cosmos. For him the
world has become a prison from which he wants to escape....“
„If man is to be delivered from the world [...] this is
accomplished through faith in the ‚alien,‘ ‚hidden‘ God who
comes to man’s aid, sends him his messengers, and shows
him the way out of the prison of the evil God of this world (be
he Zeus or Yahweh or one of the other ancient father
gods.)“ 55
Once more, let us note that Voegelin was well aware that
ancient gnosticism was not a monolithic phenomenon. At the
same time, he also recognized that all gnostics shared a
common aim: „However the phases of salvation are